


between the shadows falling

by moranice



Series: Children Of The Sun [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Dreams and Nightmares, Established Relationship, F/M, Flashbacks, Flirting, Fluff, Friendly banter, Friends to Lovers, Intimacy, Non-Explicit Sex, Sharing a Bed, Slice of Life, Snarky characters, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-10 07:04:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17421278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moranice/pseuds/moranice
Summary: « “Did you really just say‘helplessly funny’?Boy, your self-preservation instinct is so shot.” Jyn sits up and smiles pleasantly when Cassian darts a quick glance in her direction. His expression turns slightly alarmed when it dawns on him what he had just gotten himself into, but he’s nowhere near swift enough to stop Jyn.»Or alternatively: a glimpse into a lazy morning in between missions for two rebel spies and their grumpy droid friend.





	between the shadows falling

**Author's Note:**

> A second installment in a series. It can potentially be read as standalone, but there are a couple of references here to the previous story.

**╼╼╼╼╼╼**

_She’s missing the days when Saw had been protective, when he forged her determination, anger, and natural talents into the sharpest of weapons, but didn’t yet let her prove herself. She’s missing the ease of that petulant chagrin, the naiveté of youth, and the blind belief that she can make a difference if only Saw had let her try, had let her unleash all her skills and potential against her real enemy. She’s missing an illusion that hours of blood and sweat poured into a fight bring nothing but misery to her and nothing but a tighter Imperial fist around the galaxy._

_It’s ironic to walk down the memory lane and think of those frustrating times as good, but comparison’s a real bitch. So Liana (yes,_ Liana _, the name that matters to her now until she sheds it and chooses something else) tries her best not to scowl too much and not to be out of place upon the streets swarming with stormtroopers and people walking through their daily lives with resigned misery of those conquered with no hopes of fighting back. Sure, she could likely handle an open confrontation and whisk away on this maze of narrow streets, tunnels, and bridges, but beating up five Imperial troopers last week after her latest employer double-crossed her did nothing to improve her sour mood and only acquired her quite a few aching bruises across the ribs._

_Passing a young couple holding on tight to their children, adults keeping their heads down and kids unnaturally subdued and quiet, she wonders if living without a fire burning through your heart ever gets any easier. Did any of them ever possess it, ever felt like living with an immolating heat of fury inside of them, only to have it smothered and find themselves absolutely, devastatingly alone with nothing more than a shadow of an echo, with a hollow, aching emptiness?_

_Of course they didn’t._

_Drive and purpose brought her scars and betrayals. They’ve helped molding her many useful skills too, of course, there’s no denying it, but a skill with its aim askew is a special kind of torment. An aimless drift through life from a scam to a scam or from a job to a job doesn’t seem to bring her anything at all. No rest for the wicked indeed, it seems._

_She doesn’t have much credits to her name (to be frank, the only credits she has are the ones she’d lifted off from an Imperial official in the crowd of changing work shifts on the streets), but there’s nowhere to go yet and nothing to do, so Liana buys a cheap pastry from an elderly woman on the city’s oldest market and walks to the island’s harbor._

_It’s been a beautiful city once, the most influential trading hub and a cultural center, later a tourist gem for the planet. Now, though, very little remains of its old glory. It isn’t even a city that’s decaying, it’s a city that’s been murdered, but whose ghost refuses to let go._

_It might be a little too dramatic of a statement, but Liana sympathizes. She’s carrying too many ghosts of her own, and even if she prefers not to revisit them and keep them locked away tightly, there’s nothing to be done about their weight._

_She finds a secluded place by the docks that once upon a time were used to build glorious sea-ships, and sits down upon the ragged, cracking stones of a ladder leading down into the water. The wind is colder here, brimmed with the acrid smell of spilled oil, and Liana winds her scarf tighter around her neck. Her hand rests unconsciously against the necklace hidden beneath it._

_Funnily enough that’s exactly when the galaxy strikes back with its special sort of profound, deeply hurtful mockery._

_“I would’ve never given up,” says Lyra Erso._

_Her voice is loud and clear, so close as if it’s whispering against her skin. And yet Liana watches the woman who’d once been her mother sit down at the far side of the docks, as far away from her as possible._

_Liana lets go of the crystal as if burned, her heart hammering wildly in her chest. Lyra’s ghost doesn’t dissipate._

_“I would’ve fought,” Lyra continues with the same grim determination she reflected when she dared to defy the man in white. She never once turns to look at Liana, and even if Liana is too far away to see the true reflection of emotions in Lyra’s features, she’s sure Lyra’s expression is the one of resigned disappointment. “I would’ve turned the whole galaxy upside down to find my husband and to kill Orson. I wouldn’t’ve let anything but death stop me. We tried running, love. They always find you when you’re running, and it’s never on your terms.” Lyra shakes her head and leans forward, her eyes watching something in the water with the deepest of sorrows. “They’re winning, Stardust. They’re winning because I can’t stop them, and you’ve chosen not to stop them.”_

_What looked like a full moon in the water’s reflection is no moon at all. It strikes the sea with a brilliant ray of green light, the pillars of the ancient city reverberating from the impact with a mournful, dying symphony of cracks and crumbling stones._

_Liana waits for the tsunami to engulf her, but instead a warm arm curls around her waist and beckons her away from the storm._

**╼╼╼╼╼╼**

Jyn doesn’t open her eyes at first.

There was a time when she used to come awake and hold on to real things before her eyes with the same desperation a drowning person would gulp the precious air, when her first instinct was to seek out something else than the ghosts fading into the darkness of her mind. But that’s been before she ever learned the ephemeral taste of safeness that comes from the surety of having people to call home, of having someone she trusts infinitely to be there for her.

Her ghosts don’t stand a chance when she focuses her attention on the protective way Cassian’s palm rests against her stomach, on the warmth of him engulfing her when he cradles her close to his chest, on the sound of his voice whispering in concern close to her ear, “Jyn?”

She runs her palm against his hand, letting him know that she’s awake and truly with him, and concentrates on calming down her breathing. It isn’t as bad as it can be when dreams pull her to the very depth of horrors, not when Cassian caught up on her distress and lured her away from the worst of it in time, so it doesn’t take too much time to lock the lingering echoes of memories away.

It’s a stupid dream anyway; an echo of old guilt, nothing more. There’s no need for Liana in her life anymore. She’s infinitely better at trusting people when they’re worth such faith; she’d dared to reach out where Liana thought it safer to walk away; and she doesn’t turn a blind eye when the galaxy is crying now that there’s more to her life than basic survival.

Jyn won’t pretend to know she ever truly knew Lyra. She’s been too young when mama died, missed too many conversations they should’ve had about… everything. However, she’s somehow sure of one thing: would Lyra see her now ― she would be proud.

“All right?” murmurs Cassian, nudging her temple with his nose.

Jyn sneaks her hand beneath his, twines their fingers, brings their hands up and presses a tender kiss to his knuckles in a show of honest gratitude. “Great timing.”

A small, alluring shiver traverses through Cassian’s body as his breathing stutters just a tiny bit in wonder. It’s one of those things that are still thrilling: even after eighteen months of learning each other through increasingly tender and bolder touches, even after more than a year of being a couple, the sheer knowledge of wanting to touch, being allowed to touch, and having someone wanting to touch you still feels like a novel treasure to them both.

(She secretly hopes that this particular feeling will never ever go away.)

Letting Cassian feel the curve of her smile against his knuckles, Jyn nuzzles her cheek to the side of his hand. His content sigh ruffles the hair atop of the crown of Jyn’s head. “Not perfect, though,” he notes critically.

It’s one of those ongoing themes in their relationship which probably won’t even be fully forgotten. Neither of them takes particularly well to each other’s distress, but, alas, no amount of reasoning or talking about this will ever take the sting away completely. Jyn’s preferred way of dealing with such things was disregard, but since that doesn’t quite work the same way anymore, and scolding is out of the question (she’s guilty as charged of this as well), she resorts to the only tactic that feels organic. “Overachiever,” she chides fondly, rolls her eyes without opening them and locks her teeth around the thin skin atop of Cassian’s knuckles with playful gentleness.

Cassian frees his hand out of her grip only to sneak it underneath her top and rest his palm across Jyn’s belly. “I recall rather vividly that you’re fond of this particular trait.”

“In certain circumstances,” she reminds him, arching a little into his touch.

“Semantics,” he insists. The worry in his voice is gone, replaced by cadence of content softness. “I’ve started this game, so I might as well try to win,” says Cassian and presses his mouth to the back of Jyn’s head.

“That’s so very debatable. I’ve climbed into your bed first.”

He laughs in response. The sound is short but deep and sincere, the huff of warm breath weaving across the bare skin of Jyn’s neck like a faint caress. She grins at the sensation and opens her eyes.

She’ll never get tired of seeing the light in their room. Like many memories lately in her life, this light has a dear story of its own.

**╼╼╼╼╼╼**

Their new room has exactly two modes of illumination: either surgically bright or pitch-black dark. The latter, of course, gets under Jyn’s skin immediately despite her best attempts to fight it. The first night they sleep with the light on. Despite being able to fall asleep in virtually any circumstances, child soldiers growing up through harsh conditions of the war and all, this time is different. They’re safe on their ship, there’s no real pressing demand to get rest immediately as they’re in three-day long transit and neither of them is bone-deep exhausted, so sleep that night is a lot of tossing and turning and annoyance. Jyn learns that lesson well; the second night she suggests they turn the illumination off.

Her voice is even and her expression is neutral ― she knows how to lie after all, how to shut herself off and let people see that safe indifference ― and it’s a bit disconcerting that Cassian sees through her game. He’s not aware yet ― either of a story about an eight year old girl waiting for Saw Gerrera in the darkness or of a story about a sixteen year old teenager curled up on the floor of a tiny bunker a mile away from a burning city, the smoke from it so thick it didn’t let even a glimpse of moonlight spill through tiny slits of her hideout ― but somehow he understands. At the same time she can’t deny that it’s heartwarming too ― she’s learning what it means to have someone truly know her, and she loves it. He regards her with a long, thoughtful look. “Are you absolutely sure?” Cassian asks softly.

Her fear sure as hell doesn’t agree, but it’s not as if she’s giving it a fair right to vote and matter. “Just kill the light and get to bed,” Jyn shoots back a tad impatiently and braces herself for the impact.

It sucks.

The darkness is so absolute it feels like she’s back in the cave on Lah’mu all over again, only this time there’s not even a dead lantern clutched in her hands. This time there’s a sensation of a mattress dipping under Cassian’s weight, then the feeling of his warmth enveloping Jyn from behind. The touch of his hand against her hip is bold at first, then feather-light when he catches up to the tension in her body. She ignores the alarms going off in her head about acting too needy and burrows herself tightly against him. Thankfully Cassian takes a hint, his arm curling around her midsection protectively.

“It’s not working out for you,” he tells her quietly a few minutes later, his thumb brushing soothingly against her side. “It’s okay.”

Jyn locks his fingers around his wrist before he can move his hand away. “It’s not,” she echoes through a tight throat. “But I need to try this. Just… let me try.”

He heaves a sigh and holds on to her tighter. It doesn’t keep her dreams and fears at bay.

On their next supply stop Cassian buys new lamps and toys around with different brightness settings until both he and Jyn are satisfied, Kay lends his lankiness to install them, and Jyn thinks that’s it. They sleep with the light on, it seems to work out just fine, and Cassian doesn’t pry about her fears. She’s even slowly starting to entertain the idea to tell him all about them, especially after their trip to Kwenn puts them in contact with a smuggler of Festian origin and that night Cassian finally offers her first glimpses into his past, but then a mission unexpectedly comes up and there’s absolutely no time to walk down her memory lane.

The assignment requires retrieving a politician’s son from an Imperial governor (who’s allegedly holding the boy hostage) in exchange for the politician’s resources and support of the Alliance, and it has two angles: it needs someone to canvass a rich list of the governor’s shadowy properties to have an infiltration plan ready for each of them, and it needs Joreth Sward to find a way to confirm the exact location the governor’s using for it. So it’s a long weekend party at the governor’s primary fancy mansion with copious amounts of acting and talking for Cassian, and a lot of running around for Jyn.

It’s tiring, sure, but it’s also right up her alley.

It ends like this: Kay does an admirably impeccable job of infiltrating the heavily fortified villa deep in the forest, disables the security from the inside, and has immense fun disarming the thugs, shooting up kneecaps, and literally throwing people at each other; Jyn teaches a mean amount of lessons about how painful the payback can be if you dare to kidnap innocent ten year old kids and hold them hostage for two months; the boy is safely delivered to his father; the governor loses his leverage; and the off-the-books credit line provided as the reward will be enough to bring tears of joy to Vasp Vaspar’s eyes and more than enough to pay for the batch of new T-47 airspeeders the Alliance needs so much on Hoth.

That night Jyn walks into their room, tiredness finally taking its toll and catching up with her to a point where she’s way out of her attention span to scrutinize the interior she already knows by heart. She takes a quick shower, flicks the light to its night setting, flops onto the bunk, and doesn’t even find it in her to wait up for Cassian as she falls asleep mere seconds after her head touches the pillow.

She wakes up alone, but to a breathtakingly beautiful and gentle luminosity. The ceiling lamps are turned off; the soft glow comes from tiny decorative lamps secured to the wall above Jyn’s desk, saturating the room with emerald light and emphasizing the shape of her surroundings in the kindest of ways. It’s neither too bright nor too dim; Jyn sits up, rests her palm against her kyber crystal, and lets herself enjoy a few minutes of this incredible awe as she’s relearning the sight of their room: familiar to the core and yet so new in this solacing, mystifying way.

The light reminds her of a cave, but those obsidian-colored walls have never held true darkness in her memories.

Her heart brimming with emotion, she walks out of the room without truly listening to any conscious thought. She marches into the ship’s main hold with intent, but pauses at the doorstep, as always a little disarmed in the most thrilling of fashions by the way Cassian turns and smiles to her the moment he senses her presence.

Each time she thinks she can’t possibly care about him more, that there must be some kind of an edge or limit to this emotion ― oh, she does.

As if that isn’t enough, by this point in their lives they’re so conscious of each other that Cassian puts the cup of tea he’d been pouring for himself away even before Jyn makes a step towards him. He turns to face the vacant counter even before Jyn walks there and props herself up onto it. He’s looking her in the eyes, and there’s no way he sees her spreading her legs invitingly, but he immediately drifts close to her right where she wants him to be.

Jyn brackets his hips with her thighs and rests her palms against his chest. “Is that particular light okay for you?” she asks because it’s important, because even if it’s not as bright as the one they were sleeping with she doesn’t know everything that might set him off, because he’d quietly and selflessly endure anything if it means the people he cares about are comfortable even when he isn’t.

Cassian cups her face with both hands, his thumbs tracing gentle caresses against her cheekbones. She would’ve melted against him in any other circumstances, but the time’s not right before she gets her answers. Jyn purses her lips and instead looks him in the eyes with greedy, resolute intent.

The little twitch of a humorous smirk at the corner of his mouth tells her he’d just probably resisted an eye-roll. Cassian licks his lips, his expression turning serious with sharp sincerity. “Yes. Besides, it’s kind of pretty.”

She shakes her head with a dramatic sigh. “You’re handsome, real good in bed, karking smart, loyal, and deadly. And apparently you have a romantic streak. It’s so unfair.”

Receiving compliments is complicated for Cassian ― even those sincere ― but he seems to be getting better at believing them a tiny bit. This time his smirk is positively roguish and wonderfully young. “Would you like to file a formal complaint?”

Jyn narrows her eyes, going for her best friendly approximation of _not-impressed_ , but she can’t keep a chuckle at bay. “You’re lucky I find your dirty talk endearing.” And then she lets herself get lost in a moment. She winds her arms around his back, her palms resting along the sharp angles of his shoulder blades; Cassian responds by curling an arm around the small of her back. She crisscrosses her ankles behind his back and presses herself against him snugly; Cassian’s other hand cups the back of her head.

Their sync and this sensation of closeness are almost overwhelming. His caring might be the kindest, most sincere thing Jyn has ever known, and it might matter the most because it’s not something as accidental or trivial as relation by blood. No, he’s here because this is the choice he’s making day by day, because this relationship in its every dimension is not something he’s willing to let go.

The sheer magnitude of these feelings doesn’t terrify her like they’ve used to. It’s… all right, it’s very nice to feel like her heart is bigger than her bones, to feel this kind heat pooling through her every cell after knowing only seizing chills and emptiness for years, to feel so wonderfully weightless and yet so anchored at the same time.

Jyn presses her face against Cassian’s neck, closes her eyes, and simply breathes in tune with him for a while like this in utmost gratitude.

They both sigh when Kay’s heavy footsteps echo from the cockpit and close in on them tenaciously, but neither makes an attempt to move. The door to the main hold whooshes open. If to believe the sounds, Kay makes a step and comes to a grinding halt, following it up with releasing a long-suffering whir somewhere deep inside of his chassis.

Jyn smirks against Cassian’s skin and curls her fingers tighter around his shoulder.

“Would you not proceed with having intercourse in the kitchen after this intense cuddling inevitably morphs into it if I complain about this loudly enough?” clarifies Kay. There’s very little hope in his tone, though.

Cassian shakes a little with silent, a tad embarrassed laughter. Although the way he sneaks his hand down and strokes the bare skin at the side of Jyn’s hip lovingly tells her that: a) Kay has just likely made a horrible strategic mistake by voicing the idea; and b) Cassian is surprisingly very much onboard with it. “Someone needs to teach him a thing or two about tact and manners,” Jyn groans under her breath petulantly and resists the urge to roll her hips against Cassian’s.

( _For now_.)

“I’ve given up on this.” Cassian lifts one shoulder in a quick shrug. “He’s all yours if you want to have a go. My only requirement is that you two are civil about this.”

Kay stomps back into the cockpit, but not without uttering dramatically a single disgruntled word, “ _Humans_.”

Jyn finally leans away a little, tilts her head back, brushes her fingertips against Cassian’s jaw, higher up his cheekbone until she runs her finger gently against the tip of his suddenly very red ear, and chuckles with satisfaction.

His dark eyes are shining with bashful attraction, the laugh lines around them pronounced beautifully. It’s sappy and it’s not quite what she has in mind, but Jyn has to admit that the idea to simply not look away from it for a while is extremely appealing.

“He’s grumpy when I’m not having sex, since according to him it’s not physically and emotionally healthy for a human being,” Cassian says, his voice just a perfect amount of husky and shy as he licks his lips and runs his hand in a sensual caress down her thigh and to her knee. “And now he’s grumpy when I’m getting some. I’m confused. There’s literally no winning.”

Jyn presses her lips to the corner of Cassian’s mouth and leans her chest back against his, smiling triumphantly when he squeezes his fingers around her knee in response. “Depends on a game and with whom you’re playing.” She angles her head a little so that their noses bump against each other, and whispers, "Your tea will get all cold.”

“Mint tea is perfect even when it’s cold.” Cassian’s fingers weave into Jyn’s hair and gently tug until she tilts her head back and lets him trail his lips against the sensitive skin at the underside of her jaw. “And even if it wasn’t,” he murmurs against her pulse point now, “see if I care.”

Sometime later and after a shower they curl up together in their bed in a lazy, naked tangle of bodies, and Jyn tells Cassian three stories. First is about a girl on Lah’mu who first learned the shape and feel of absolute, suffocating darkness. Second is about a teenager on Tamsye Prime who’s been nothing more but a discarded weapon to her mentor. And third is about a child on Eilanes who didn’t remember the exact cadence of mama’s voice, but remembered the lessons tied to a temple in a cave.

“She was right,” Jyn says.

She believes it.

**╼╼╼╼╼╼**

Jyn lets go of the memory, arches her back, and asks, “What time is it?”

Cassian rolls away from her, although he doesn’t go far and settles comfortably on his back next to Jyn. “Two and a half hours more until touchdown.”

It’s early morning then by their ship’s cycle time, and it’s more than enough time not to be in any kind of hurry.

Jyn arches her body again in a stretch, this time feeling it up from her neck down to the tips of her toes, and squints at the small shelf secured to the wall by the edge of the bunk. Her comlink is in place where she left it, at the far side of the shelf. The blaster she had stolen from Cassian’s bag back on Yavin 4 lies close to the bed, easy to reach, alongside her favorite vooktar knife. (Cassian had spent a good half an hour bargaining for a reasonable price with a particularly greedy merchant during one of their supply trips after he’d seen Jyn eyeing it hungrily and undoubtedly planning how to snatch it for herself without being caught. She pouted at him when he presented the legally purchased weapon to her, but grabbed it greedily when Cassian smirked and started tucking it away into his bag.) Her hairband is still hanging precariously from the shelf’s sharp corner after she threw it there carelessly yesterday.

No datapad, though.

Jyn narrows her eyes in suspicion. She rolls to face Cassian, flops onto her side next to him, and props herself up on her elbow to take inventory of things resting upon the clever notch in the wall that runs all alongside the bunk and makes a perfect shelf. There’s Cassian’s blaster and his multifunctional pocketknife, there are two of his datapads and the beautiful relic of a book, its cover black with a strikingly detailed illustration weaved of shining golden leaves, that Jyn bought a few months back from an old woman on a flea market.

(She devoured the entire one point five thousand pages in a span of a week, often neglecting sleep during a long trip through hyperspace in between their missions; Cassian though, while tending to read anything just as unnaturally fast as she is, deliberately takes his time with this book.

It’s a great, exciting tale of a race that had mastered the fabric of the universe and weaved perfect beings out of it, only to have their creations turn against them and haunt them to the ends of galaxies. It’s a story about hubris, mistakes, and cruelty. It’s also a story about resilience and hope, about love and undying belief.

She relates to it now more than ever.)

Jyn tilts her head and sends a threatening look Cassian’s way. The corner of his mouth quirks up in a sly smirk as he picks up her datapad from where it lay discarded between him and the wall, and rests it on his stomach, balancing it against his thigh (made easy by the fact that he’s got both knees canted up). Absolutely shameless and nonchalant, he flicks the device back on, swiftly types in a long-ass numeric code, draws a complicated gesture pattern against the screen to unlock it, and picks up the game where he had left it off previously.

Jyn nuzzles to his side, rests her head upon his shoulder, and pokes her fingers meaningfully against his ribs, careful to avoid the broken, scarred ones from Scarif. “You’ve hacked your game not even a third day into playing it,” she mutters in a lieu of chiding accusation.

“I’m surprised you didn’t,” he points out and weaves his hand around Jyn’s shoulders, his fingers immediately starting to stroke a comforting caress up and down her arm. He taps his index finger on a mystical beast of his team ― _Jyn’s_ chosen team; the smallest yet swiftest and deadliest unit available to her at this point of the game ― selects an attack that both causes physical damage and reduces the opponent’s attack score, and sends it to strike the most aggressive and threatening beast on the other side. “It gets more frustrating with every level up. The capacity of your academy doesn’t allow training more units than five for now; every beast training or exploration takes hours if not days at your level; there’s an overflow of resources since you don’t have enough beasts meeting the requirements to upgrade your storage. There’s literally the only thing you can do, and that’s playing a one-to-one face-off with offline opponents without even getting any nice rewards since you’ve reached your limit of them for a day. It’s really getting old at this point.”

“Yet you stole my device and are currently doing just that.”

“Idle curiosity,” replies Cassian nonchalantly. “Besides, your team is so helplessly funny on level fifty-four out of the maximum two hundred and eighty. Such babies. You’re nowhere even near unlocking the coolest beasts.”

“Did you really just say ‘ _helplessly funny_ ’? Boy, your self-preservation instinct is so shot.” Jyn sits up and smiles pleasantly when Cassian darts a quick glance in her direction. His expression turns slightly alarmed when it dawns on him what he had just gotten himself into, but he’s nowhere near swift enough to stop Jyn.

She whisks away from the bed to put on her clothing, absolutely triumphant after making Cassian drop her datapad back upon the bunk and shake with a decidedly undignified and perfectly uncontrollable fit of laughter.

He should’ve known better to once dare locate a ticklish point at the side of Jyn’s ribs and think she won’t come back at him with crushing retaliation for such mischief, after all.

**╼╼╼╼╼╼**

Jyn has pulled of her fair share of good thefts, but there’s one she’s particularly proud of.

Like many good things in her life lately, this one is completely unplanned. Her third mission together with Cassian after he’s cleared for field work again and newly-rebooted Kay turned out to be a tricky improvisation game that ended in a crushing success and left Jyn with a prize for ages.

Liberated from the bounty hunter Jyn killed before he could locate a high-ranking Imperial defector and dispose of him, the _Reckless_ is a masterpiece of a vessel. It’s fair to assume that whichever credits the bounty hunter had earned, the vast majority went into this ship.

The _Reckless_ is new, custom-made, and definitely expensive, but it doesn’t scream of it either on the inside or on the outside; it looks... plain and a little raggedy, to be honest, which helps it not to attract thieves as much as it should’ve, and not to raise any suspicious eyebrows in the criminal underworld and Imperial-controlled spaceports alike.

The modifications make it highly-maneuverable, impeccably-shielded, and wickedly fast. Kay may be grouchy about the fact all he wants (considering their friendly ongoing rivalry with Jyn about almost everything), but his blunt honesty gives him no other choice but to admit that it’s the best ship he had ever piloted.

It’s a nice bonus to all the practical and rebellion-valuable things, but the _Reckless_ is smartly designed: it’s comfortable and everything inside is convenient. The bounty hunter was probably living on the ship, so there’s a small workout room with all the necessities. For Force’s sake, there’s even a space here that can be safely called a kitchen without insulting the term.

It’s been quite some time since the _Reckless_ became theirs, but Cassian still looks at kitchen with a kind of childlike delight in his eyes and never misses an opportunity to cook something if the circumstances allow for it. Which is totally fine by Jyn, since having a belly full of fresh meals on a frequent basis as well as seeing Cassian happy is very high on the list of things that make her very pleased.

She’s never been the one to complain about living conditions, but a fold-out bunk aboard of a U-wing class ship plain sucks in comparison with the bunk in hers and Cassian’s quarters on the _Reckless_.

So hey, a little slice of decadence in your personal taste and style is not such a bad thing.

The little gym may be her favorite space aboard. Jyn strolls inside energetically, practically bouncing with desire to unwind, Cassian following behind her. They go through the series of exercises prescribed for his back together: Jyn quickly discovered that they’re perfect for stretching her muscles in the morning and preparing her for more intense physical activities.

Then she wraps her hands from knuckles to elbows with a boxing tape, while Cassian picks up his datapad from the bench and settles on the floor for a grueling round of push-ups combined with some morning reading. She glances at him fondly; the range of what he’s reading can easily vary from some Alliance-related intel no one managed to find any use for to obscure articles on absolutely random topics.

Jyn walks barefoot to the wooden dummy, its target parts wrapped around with protective cushions, takes a deep breath, and walks through the traditional Jedhan Guardian routine that Baze started teaching her back on _Home One_ the moment both of them were healed enough after Scarif for it. Four swift jabs in a span of a breath, one hand then another, her knuckles barely brushing the cushion. Step back, turn her hips, a gentle shin kick against the cushion, repeat with another leg. Get through a complicated series of hand hits, regulate her breathing and speed, keep track of proper footwork and interchange the katas with well-placed leg kicks.

Jyn smiles like a predator, her body singing with the gentlest fire of a great workout, and closes this part with a complex sequence of jabs, crosses, and hooks, a graceful swirl of her body and a knee slammed against the cushion.

Taking a small break for a sip of water, she notes that Cassian has moved on from push-ups to keeping his body in a perfect horizontal balance upon his hands and is still idly reading something as if the exercise requires no concentration whatsoever or puts no strain at all on his body.

Jyn snaps the bottle’s lid closed, puts it back down onto the bench, and walks to the dummy, but stops a considerable distance away. Planting her feet into a firm stance upon the floor, she rolls her neck, closes her eyes, and focuses her mind on the memories. It’s a trick she learned back when she was still a kid, eager to be Saw’s best soldier. She would sneak out of his outpost on Wrea before the first lights of dawn ever showed, especially when others visited, walk up to the scattering of giant stones that were nothing but nature at its chaos, but looked a little like an ancient training alcove, stop next to an empty trooper armor Saw had hung upon a horizontal bar secured upon the two highest of stones, and mentally go through everything he taught her before she’d start an actual workout.

She starts slowly, letting remembrance of both mind and body guide her through the sequences of movements in between the arms of an imaginary dummy. Every time she makes a mistake she pauses, takes a deep breath, and patiently starts the sequence all over again. In these things, she has learned, restraint and skill are paramount.

When Jyn is satisfied and when none of the katas are imperfect, she opens her eyes, steps into the range of the actual dummy’s wooden arms, and starts anew. Again, she begins with the easiest, slow workout, never once even touching the dummy as she adjusts to its shape and size, re-learns it again in order to let her instincts guide her through the motions. Then finally she shifts to precise and careful hits, switching between using her hands, forearms, and elbows for the strikes.

She walks through three different techniques, each swifter and more grueling than the previous one, feeling a pleasant kind of strain roll through her body in waves as her breathing grows more ragged. In the end, feeling a warrior’s true exhilaration, she lets her intuition unravel and falls into a series of sharper and faster katas that shape a sophisticated sequence of her own design.

Jyn falls back when the strain feels too much, but only after reaching a beautiful conclusion to the sequence. Bending a little and resting her hands against her thighs, she focuses on catching her breath. Her mind, now free of the concentration and rhythm of the workout, immediately catches on the sensation of being watched. She turns to find Cassian regarding her with a hungry kind of awe, sitting on the floor with his knees canted up and his elbows resting upon them. She smirks knowingly when he doesn’t try to look away and pretend he’s not absolutely enthralled by the view: this has gotten far less awkward ever since they’ve started having sex and neither of them feels the need to hide the effect they have on each other anymore.

She walks to the bench and settles upon it, gulping the water hungrily. Cassian rises up in a graceful, fluid motion, carefully shoves the datapad to the side with his foot, jumps up and holds on to a horizontal bar. Mirroring Jyn’s smirk, he proceeds to go through a set of pull-ups. Jyn rests her back against the wall, spreads her legs, and watches the wiry, yet perfectly defined muscles of his shoulders and arms roll with the movement as she idly starts unwrapping her hands without truly paying any attention to her own actions.

He holds the lines of his body in a proper form for the exercise, as if Jyn needs any more reasons to admire the sight. On the other hand, she had learned the hardest yet most pleasant of ways, Cassian is almost illegally handsome and attractive to her mind and body both in devastating sync in almost any circumstance and with any amount of bare skin exposed, so it’s not as if it’s fair to grumble about his perfectionism and what’s it doing to her.

She rolls her eyes when afterwards he hangs from the bar, pulls his body up in a quick motion, rotates it over the bar, balances on his hands up high for solid ten seconds before landing back on his feet gracefully. “Vanity's not a virtue,” Jyn mutters for good measure, feigning absolute indifference to the view.

Cassian comes close to her, bends, snatches her water bottle, and steps back to a relatively safe distance that won’t allow Jyn to kick him with her foot. “And yet you’re the one who’s watching,” he counters with a deceptively innocent roll of his shoulders and attempts a wink.

He fails miserably as usual, of course, but it never stops being adorable and funny.

**╼╼╼╼╼╼**

Jyn doesn’t give a second thought to the fact that they walk in to the shower together. It can be fun, sure, but most of the days they simply do it to be efficient and because they’re utterly comfortable with each other’s presence, naked or not.

She strips out of her workout clothing quickly, throws it into a sonic laundry tank, and steps into the shower first. When she reaches out her hand to turn on the sonic mode, Cassian catches her before she can do it. Stepping behind her, he taps his other hand upon the water’s control.

Well, quick efficiency is out from the schedule, but it’s not as if Jyn will ever say no to the pleasant feeling of warm water cascading down her skin. She smiles and steps fully under the spray, content with playing along with whatever Cassian’s got in mind.

Still, they do wash rather efficiently: Cassian runs the soap against her body in a tender, but decidedly not too-intimate kind of way, never once lingering more than needed, and Jyn returns the favor. It’s easier now, with nervousness stripped away, with already knowing every inch of their skins. Of course, the desire to indulge in this quiet intimacy, to map out every shape of their bodies and gradually build up the heat between them didn’t go away with time, but it morphed into something steadier: a flame that burns with the same exciting warmth, but which doesn’t flicker with the same chaotic wildness and uncontrollable urgency as it was used to.

She stands with her eyes closed as he methodically winds his shampoo-soaked hands through her hair and gently massages her scalp with her fingertips. The first time Cassian ever did it, she nearly melted against his chest. To be frank, she wants to let go and brush her body against his, to capture that amazing sensation of utter peace filled with the flame of attraction, but she keeps one hand balanced against the wall, careful to stay still. Cassian seems to be all business about his touch more than usual, so she lets him choose whether he wants something more from her now or not.

When her hair is all clean and she’d done the same for him, Jyn reaches out to turn the water off. This time Cassian doesn’t simply stop her; he catches her by the shoulders with both arms, spins them around, and gently pushes her forward until her back rests against the wall.

Jyn raises a surprised eyebrow at him. He responds with a teasing smile and swiftly goes down on his knees before her.

He can be spontaneous (and even build it up as he did now), all right, as he rests his hands above Jyn’s knees and nuzzles his nose against her inner thigh until Jyn spreads her legs invitingly, and it’s thrilling. But there’s a thing Jyn absolutely loves him for: he doesn’t make assumptions and never ever forgets to ask for permission.

“May I?” Cassian presses an open-mouthed, hungry kiss beneath Jyn’s hipbone, but doesn’t move his hands any higher than the middle of her thighs. There’s no smugness in his features or his gaze, even though he likely earned the right for it, only the absolute beauty of anticipation intermingled with restraint.

She rests her hands against his shoulders and lazily traces her fingers against the sharp lines of his collarbones. It’s both exciting and so wonderfully, profoundly soothing to feel the warmth of his soft, wet skin, to experience this sensation of vitality and connection at the edge of her fingertips. There’s a silvery notch of an old vibroblade scar slanting down his right shoulder blade; Jyn runs her index finger against the mark on pure tactile memory, feeling him rest his forehead against the curve of her hip. “Hmm,” she hums with deceiving innocence, turns her hands, and brushes the backs of her fingertips against the sides of Cassian’s neck, “I was planning on having a very unhurried breakfast.”

Cassian tilts his head so that his cheekbone brushes against her thigh, his beard just a perfect length to scratch softly against her delicate skin. Jyn shivers, her mouth parting and her eyes fluttering closed at the sensation and an even more urgent feeling of molten heat pooling low in her belly. “How much time are you willing to give me?” he asks softly, mapping out the sensitive skin at the inside of her knee with his fingertips.

“Fifteen minutes and not a second more,” she states, biting her bottom lip in anticipation, and lets Cassian guide one of her legs over his shoulder. “Go on, impress me.”

“Challenge accepted,” he murmurs, sneaking a hand up to a crease between Jyn’s thigh and hip. “I bet I can make you moan in less than five minutes.”

**╼╼╼╼╼╼**

He does.

Not that Jyn complains about the fact, since it leaves her exquisitely satisfied and still shaking a little in the aftermath with pleasant aftershocks, and gives her fair seven minutes to use her mouth cleverly in sweet retaliation and reduce Cassian to a beautiful wreck who barely keeps himself upright on weak legs in the haze of his own pleasure.

**╼╼╼╼╼╼**

Jyn walks into the main hold of the _Reckless_ three minutes after she slips away from the ‘fresher, in her everyday clothes and armed with a blaster and two knives, her damp hair loose around her shoulders.

“Morning, Grump,” she says as she spots Kay sitting in the middle of a small couch next to the ship’s systems workstation.

He keeps his attention firmly on the datapad he holds in one hand and is actively poking at with his index finger. “Right back at you, Tiny Entropy.”

Leaving two datapads upon the small dining table, Jyn purposefully walks to the couch, sits down upon the armrest, and, resting a hand against its back for balance, leans over Kay to peek at the datapad’s screen. He’s playing _Strongholds_ again, a strategic card game he’d lately developed a particular affinity to. It’s time to draw the characters again, and Jyn watches the screen with curiosity.

Predictably enough, Kay’s deck of choice is the most offensive combination of characters ever, the ripe ground for doing your best to block your opponent’s moves or stop their construction progress. It’s Jyn’s favorite too, as it provides some interesting strategizing in order to balance offence with other game objectives and keeps you constantly evaluating risks even more than in any other game configuration.

“Hi, Kay,” intones Cassian as he steps into the main hold. Jyn darts her gaze at him; it’s a crime to miss the sight of him so far away from an almost painfully neat, indifferent Captain Andor that everyone but his rogue family sees. He’s still not fully dressed, rolling his shirt up his arms as he’s walking, his hair, she points out with no small amount of amused pride, is damp and still wild, and there’s definitely some leftover flush lingering high up his cheeks. Cassian glances at her and Kay, then at the datapad in Kay’s hands, and adds rhetorically, “You’re hunting to choose an _Assassin_ again, aren’t you?”

(Cassian prefers the decks that are more oriented on gathering the resources and building up a city to a win quicker; those demand a very intricate balance and careful choices of locations you want to add to your city.)

“Alas, an _Assassin_ is either snatched by the hostile opposing AI or randomly discarded in this new round,” complains Kay sullenly.

“Yup, here goes a _Thief_ ,” announces Jyn as Kay chooses his character and discards an _Architect_ from the round.

“Boring,” reflects Cassian and walks to their small fridge to pick up the ingredients for the breakfast.

“Do you realize that you’re saying this because you lose to me and Jyn when we play this deck four point seven percent more frequently than using any other deck?”

“Yes. Still, thank you for an observation, Kay,” he replies absent-mindedly, busy with fishing out plates from the counter’s drawer.

“He’s not wrong about this,” remarks Jyn with tell-tale crooning innocence.

“Still boring,” Cassian insists with slightly more force in his tone and waves her off without looking back.

Kay tears his attention from the screen for a quick moment to turn his head in Jyn’s direction and point out, “Why, thank you. I am touched by your unnatural absence of sarcasm.”

“Don’t get all fretful, Grump. You’ll always be outraged by the majority of choices I’m making.”

“That is one of those rare things about you that go beyond the shadow of a doubt,” he supplies with no small amount of smug pleasure.

Jyn follows the game’s round unfolding with enthusiasm. For all the skill and careful consideration that must go into this game, the component of luck is massive. Even the best of tactics or intention can easily be thwarted by a series of truly bad or inconvenient city cards at hand.

Kay opts for stealing from a _Priest_ , which earns him a single credit only since his opponent possessed a _King_ and used three credits to construct _Sewers_. That’s… all right; there was a solid fifty-to-fifty percent chance there, as the opponent was choosing between a _King_ and a _Merchant_ for its last character card.

What does make Jyn roll her eyes and groan out loud is Kay’s choice not to wait for the next round and collect enough credits to build an indestructible _Fortification_ , but to erect a puny _Lookout Tower_ for a single credit. Yeah, sure, he needs to build up his city as he has only one building in comparison with the opponent’s four now, but there’s smart construction and there’s desperate construction.

“It’s going to bite you in your metal arse,” Jyn shakes her head dramatically and clicks her tongue with reproach.

Kay sits still, his only motion a judgmental, annoyed side-eye directed Jyn’s way, his oculars gleaming with a slightly brighter light than usual. “Good. It’s going to break its metaphorical teeth.” With that, he focuses back on the game’s next round.

Truth to be told, there are no guarantees that his move is going to be a useless one. But this time justice is on Jyn’s side. Throughout the course of the next round, the AI’s selection of cards allows for gathering more resources by exploiting the benefit of character-to-a-building-type connection, and there are two low-cost new buildings on its side. Kay builds one too as he lucks out with a draw from the deck ― a _Bank_ from a special building type set that promises him a haul of one additional credit at the start of every turn, but loses his _Lookout Tower_ as the AI’s character choice is a _General_ who’s entitled to destroy any enemy building by paying the amount of credits required to build it minus one.

Jyn pats Kay on his shoulder plate in a display of fake reassurance and whisks away from the range of his grabby hands just in case. It’s not that Kay would ever harm her, but she isn’t particularly inclined to find out whether he’d follow up on his old threat of picking her up by the hem of her shirt, extend his outrageously long arm away from his body, and find out how much time it’s going to take her to get free.

She walks by Cassian, brushing her hand lightly against the back of his arm in passing to let him know she’s close, and props herself up on her favorite place in the main hold: the only counter clean of things that gives her a perfect vantage point since there’s only a tiny part of the room she can’t see from here.

He’s… well, to say that Cassian’s cooking now would be to offend his sensibilities. He once described the preparation of a simple salad as a _‘child’s play with a construction set’_ , after all. Jyn doesn’t care for cooking at all (and by this she means a preference not to poke at it even with the longest stick available if she can help it), but whatever Cassian is preparing with any kind of food, and whatever time and intricacy it requires to produce a meal, it’s always delicious.

She could tease him about going for an easier breakfast than usual, but then again he did spent quite some time preparing the meat and cheese stuffing for the slim flatbread and a nice herbal cream sauce to dip it into for their yesterday’s dinner, so Jyn supposes she can let this slide. Besides, he’d been the one whose eyes gleamed when he spotted this particular salad mix in the shop they’ve been stocking up on their last stop for refueling and all but rushed to purchase it even if the price for some leaves, in Jyn’s mind, was a little bit too steep.

(Not that their ongoing online credit heist isn’t fun or morally satisfying as they make rebel lives just a tiny bit happier, but the little indulgences it allows Cassian to succumb to without feeling incredibly guilty about wasting the Alliance’s credits for them are totally worth every minute spent upon those scams as far as Jyn is concerned.)

Close to her, on two flat plates different types of salad leaves are arranged. One is orange as a sun at dusk, its leaves smooth; the other’s purple color is almost offensive in its brightness, the thick leaves spiky like the crowns of pine trees. Cassian finishes chopping up the thin, white roll of something decidedly lettuce-like and angles the cutting board over one plate, then another, directing the fall of tiny white pieces with the knife until they form little pyramidal-shaped structures at the middle of the plates.

Jyn releases a tiny indignant huff ― of course their shapes are near perfect ― and Cassian lifts one shoulder in a lackadaisical shrug, a smile playing tricks at the corner of his mouth.

He picks up some freshly-washed sesha berries (Jyn disagrees with the classification, the size and taste of them are decidedly vegetable-like), swiftly cuts them into thin pear-shaped pieces, and arranges them around the lettuce on the plates.

Then it’s time to add a little herb flavoring on top. Jyn examines the little bottle Cassian puts down on the counter with a critical eye, noting that at the rate they’re both going through this particular flavoring type they’ll need to re-stock it sometime this month.

Nudging the small fridge open with his foot, Cassian picks up a vacuum-sealed package and pries it open. Jyn’s mouth waters at the delicious smell immediately and she impatiently watches Cassian lay down the thin strips of dried nerf meat upon the plates in some specific pattern, going as far as idly swinging her legs and drumming her fingertips against the counter.

“Before you say anything,” he tells her nonchalantly and moves on to the second plate, “yes, I’m aware that I’m handling this construction set with impeccable style.”

Jyn punishes such cockiness with leaning over Cassian and snatching a piece of meat from the finished plate. She arches a devious eyebrow as she sits back, dangles the piece in between her thumb and index finger, then tilts her head back, arches her spine, and takes a little bite.

She purses her lips a little in confusion since Cassian doesn’t seem affected ― _hmm, this has always been bound to get a reaction from him_ ― but that lasts only until he persists with finishing dressing up the other plate. Once he’s done, Cassian straightens up and puts the half-empty package away. Resting one hand against the counter’s surface, he leans against it with his hip and meets Jyn’s gaze with an unspoken, yet definite challenge as he moves his other hand to snatch a piece of meat from the plate closest to her and brings it to his mouth with a gleam of pure deviltry in his dark eyes.

It’s not her most gracious moment, but Jyn’s mouth goes slack from absolute surprise and a breath of playful outrage. Before she even scrambles for some dignified snippy remark, Cassian remarks jovially, “I’ve finally figured out that if I can’t reason with you or fight you about it, I’ll try to see what the petty thieving fuss is all about.” He finishes chewing on his meat, swallows, brings two fingers to his mouth, licks them clean (which doesn’t rouse any fresh memories in Jyn’s mind, _not at all_ ), and concludes in an infuriatingly even tone, “I must admit, I’m starting to appreciate the benefits.”

Oh, this so deserves a spectacular tackle to the floor from Jyn’s vantage point and showing him who’s the boss, but they don’t have a preferable amount of time for this on their hands and they’ve just walked out of the shower. So Jyn tucks the idea of sweet revenge at the easily-accessible place at the back of her mind and vows to make it come true at a time when Cassian would drop his guard and least expect this coming back to haunt him.

“There’s some hope for you yet,” she opts to say instead with mild appreciation and looks away proudly as if she isn’t affected by the show at all. “I might make a true rebel out of you yet, Captain.”

“And I've thought it was bad when you two haven’t gotten the hang of flirting and turned it into a very strange mating foreplay,” intones Kay gravely from the couch.

She almost opens her mouth to bite back at him with something like _‘what do you know’_ , given Kay’s still atrocious lack of tact or understanding of organic social intricacies, but she can already hear him countering dryly _‘certainly more than you’_ , and there’s no argument about this anyone can win with Kay because _‘unnecessary over-complication of any concept seems to be one of the primary design flaws of organic beings’_.

“No winning indeed,” Jyn whispers conspiringly to Cassian.

He chuckles in response to this private joke, restores dish order by adding two pieces of meat at the places of stolen ones, seals the package and hides it away into the fridge. Next he picks up another plastic bag from the cold, opens it up, and scatters quite a few rich pinches of blue-colored grated cheese all over the plates. It’s definitely more than the recipe requires, Jyn is sure of it, but Cassian won’t be doing it if it could ruin the salad, and it totally appeases to her affinity to this particular flavor of cheese.

When the cheese is hidden away, he swings the shelf’s door above his head open and picks up the freshly-baked bread they’d purchased yesterday. Jyn passes him the knife best suited for cutting bread from the kitchen set to her right, and watches with quiet appreciation how Cassian manages to make the slices even and thin. He stops at five slices, wraps the bread back and puts it on the shelf, lays the pieces down on another plate he plucks from a rack upon the open shelf to his left, and puts it into the heating oven for exactly fifteen seconds.

Jyn’s mouth waters yet again when Cassian puts the plate upon the table (for some reason there’s nothing like the scent and taste of fresh, soft bread that brings her so much culinary pleasure, even if she’s sure mama’s never been particularly good at making bread), and her stomach traitorously growls. She wrinkles her nose.

“Huh, perfect timing,” observes Cassian, picks up the crustiest piece of bread from the plate and brings it to Jyn’s mouth.

He isn’t teasing. No, his eyes look different in playful taunting; this time his gaze is full of warm affection, and it’s reflected in that soft, shy half-smile on his lips, in the hope Jyn could taste if she’d reach out and capture his mouth with hers. He knows, of course, how much she loves the bread’s heel; there are five pieces because she’d very much enjoy a taste before they sit down for the breakfast.

She takes a bite and closes her eyes, reveling at the taste blossoming on her tongue. The bread is warm, the flavor is indescribably potent, and the crust is perfectly crunchy. Opening her eyes again, Jyn runs her fingertips against the back of Cassian’s hand in a tactile show of her gratitude and snatches the piece away from his grip.

“I take it we’re in for a treat?”

“We’re always in for a treat when I’m choosing which bread to buy,” she replies proudly and licks her lips.

“Choosing ingredients for a meal smartly accounts for roughly twenty percent of an overall culinary success,” points out Cassian. “I might make a cook out of you yet, Sergeant.”

“Keep dreaming,” Jyn shrugs, unperturbed.

“We’ll see.” Cassian looks down at the plates thoughtfully, biting the inside of his lip. “Can you pass me the sauce dressings?”

Chewing on her second bite of bread, Jyn blindly gropes for the shelf’s edge, finds the notch in the door and pushes it up and open. “Which _ones,_ master chef?” she inquires, side-eyeing the rows of bottles big and tiny in a variety of different shapes.

The collection might be getting a little bit out of hand.

(She has a slight problem with weapons: knives, blasters, truncheons all alike and in rich assortment. It’s perfectly reasonable to own such an amount of weapons; the galaxy’s drowning in a war after all, you never know which particular type of arms you might need and when it’s a time for a spare.

Cassian’s problems are: modifications and different parts for his blaster (totally fine, Jyn relates), miscellaneous flavors of tea, spices, and sauces, droid parts, and old electronic devices.)

“My spicy vinaigrette…”

Jyn eyes him with a dirty look. Cassian glances at the open shelf, his eyebrows furrowing. “Right,” he mutters to himself, and rectifies, “The second bottle to the left, transparent, with peppers at the bottom.” She smirks at him and passes the bottle into his open palm when he extends his hand to receive it. “And grab that new bottle of balsamic I’ve picked up yesterday. Hope you’ll like it.”

It would be a lie to say that Jyn doesn’t appreciate this gesture. She’s never been prickly about spicy food, but there’s spicy and there’s flaming hot, and she can’t quite figure out how Cassian can even stomach that damn sauce without throwing up or spontaneously combusting in place. She seizes another bottle and puts it down next to her plate.

Cassian picks the balsamic first, screws it open, brings it close to his face and sniffs at it. His serious expression changes into a facial equivalent of a stamp of approval, and he pours the liquid liberally all over Jyn’s salad, scrupulous to make sure the surface is evenly covered.

He puts the bottle away, but seems to linger in place, his eyes thoughtful and fixed upon the plate.

Having finished with her bread, Jyn wipes her hand with a rag they have hanging upon the wall and rests her palm against Cassian’s waist, scratching her thumb against his back. “What’s up?”

“Can I try your version of the salad?”

“Your thieving career will for sure be short-lived if you keep this up,” she pats his hipbone and leans back, watching Cassian with curiosity. “Go on, then.”

Cassian picks up two forks from the compartment upon the shelf, places one against the edge of Jyn’s plate close to her, and swipes a small piece of the salad with his. He doesn’t even go for a piece of meat, only the leaves, lettuce, sesha, and cheese, brings the fork up to his mouth, his other hand hovering underneath all the way, and hesitates for a moment.

Jyn smiles to him encouragingly, raising her eyebrows a little in confusion to his sudden doubt, and Cassian finally tastes the salad. His intent focus shatters under the force of pure delight. He grins like a child discovering something marvelously tasty for the very first time and licks his lips afterwards. “I…” he scratches the back of his head self-consciously, fidgeting a little with the fork. “I’ve only tried it spicy before. It’s been a traditional recipe on Fest. It hasn’t occurred to me that it could be so different, yet so great with a softer flavor. It’s… richer.”

“Everything’s richer when you can taste something else other than the flavor of everlasting fire,” quips Jyn wisely.

Cassian’s expression tells her _okay, you’ve got me there_ , and he doesn’t seem offended whatsoever, so she reaches out for the spicy bottle, fingers locking around it like a vise, but waits with putting it away before Cassian nods and busies himself with dousing his plate with balsamic as well.

Behind them, Kay grumbles a very distinct word _‘bitch’_ in Festian as he apparently loses a second game in a row. Jyn quietly snickers; with Kay’s truly impressive vocabulary of vicious insults in Huttese (they still haven’t concluded which one of them is a true master in the art of these specific profanities) his choice of the cuss is very strategic. Of course Cassian sighs with a sheepish look of someone who accidentally swore one time in front of a toddler and now has to face the repercussions of his slip every single day, and glowers at the droid for this without true real ire.

She and Kay may bicker relentlessly, but it’s real nice to have a loyal partner in crime to drive Cassian a tiny bit nuts for good measure.

Some few minutes later, as she sits with her back propped up against the wall and her feet resting in Cassian’s lap, enjoying a tasteful breakfast and reading up on Cassian’s mission report as he is reviewing hers, Jyn protectively locks up yet another great memory in the most sacred corner of her heart.

This life on softer tides in the storm of war that she somehow managed to snatch for herself doesn’t come close to her most sacred dreams.

It beats them by a mile. 

**Author's Note:**

> The card and datapad games are not my inventions and are based on real-life games.
> 
> Any typos or mistakes are all mine.


End file.
